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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29131857">The Writer, not the Story</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrared/pseuds/scrared'>scrared</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>dream smp drabbles [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Video Blogging RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Character Study, Manipulative Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Poetry, Prison, Protective Sam | Awesamdude, dream escapes, please I'm begging you, someone help the traumatised child</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 06:41:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,633</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29131857</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrared/pseuds/scrared</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Dream inevitably escapes his prison, and leaves behind nothing but words made of glass.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Clay | Dream &amp; TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Sam | Awesamdude &amp; TommyInnit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>dream smp drabbles [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2164821</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>144</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Writer, not the Story</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>disclaimer, this is all rp, if anyone involved is uncomfortable I will take it down, it just took me four tries to spell uncomfortable, etc, etc</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tommy was not unbreakable.</p><p>It was so painfully obvious, and yet so many people were blind to it. </p><p>It was in the way his eyes moved, trying to communicate something in a language the rest of them hadn’t yet learned to recognise. It was in the way he never stopped moving, never stopped shouting, never stopped trying to be heard. It was in the way he reached out without reaching out – desperate to not be alone, Sam thinks, as he looks at the empty cell with a growing hole in his heart.</p><p>Tommy was not unbreakable, but he hadn’t broken yet. He was a child, and he had been through so much, but he was still living. Maybe not whole, maybe not without cracks and chips and flaws, but he was still going.</p><p>He hadn’t broken yet, and Sam was terrified that this would be what broke him.</p><p>But there was only so much he could do to protect Tommy. He couldn’t wrap the kid in bubble wrap and shield him from the world. He couldn’t build walls around him, because that would only hurt him more. It was a cruel world, and Sam couldn’t do anything about that. Not without making it even crueller. God, if Dream started on his bullshit again, then for all Sam knew, there may come a time when he has to fight against Tommy.</p><p>He really, really hopes not.</p><p>Obsidian scratches against his fingers, and Sam takes a few deep breaths. He needs to tell Tommy. He owes him that, at the very least. Tommy deserves the truth, and that is all Sam can offer. Tommy is strong – so strong, so brave, so alive.</p><p>That’s the issue with Tommy, he supposes. He’s too alive for this world. He’d brought that life with him, and that was too much. It was too much for this world and for these people, and it was too much for Dream.</p><p>It made him perfect for Dreams little games, and there was nothing Sam could do to protect him. He could try and help Tommy all he could – help him build his hotel and help him have fun and try and let him be a child as much as possible – he could do all that, but in the end, there was nothing he could do for Tommy against Dream. </p><p>He could tell Tommy first, though. It would be better for Tommy to hear it from him than from anyone else. Heavens knows Tommy has the right to know about Dreams escape more than anyone else.</p><p>Maybe Dreams old friends deserved to know as well, because they were hurt by Dream too. But Tommy – god, the things Dream had put Tommy through, nobody could understand. It wasn’t fair for a kid to be hurt that much at all, let alone by one man. So he’d tell Tommy first, and worry about Sapnap and George and – well, probably not Bad, because he had his whole evil egg thing now, and god this server was a mess – but he’d worry about them later.</p><p>Because Dream had escaped, and Sam had no idea what would happen next. What he did know was that whatever Dream did, it would effect Tommy. Tommy, who had already been through so much. Tommy, who had survived loss after loss after loss. Who had walked through hellfire and was still standing. Tommy, whose skin was cut by a type of blade that none of the rest of them could understand or see, who walked around with those invisible blades pointed at him, and still lived.</p><p>If god exists outside of Dream, then Sam prays that he’d start listening to their screams.</p><p> </p><p>-----------------------------------</p><p> </p><p>Tommy stood in the empty cell, his back to the lava the still left a sour feeling under his skin. It stung, in a way that left a kind of emptiness inside of him. Everyone feels that kind of emptiness at some point, but he thought that maybe his was a little bigger than some others. </p><p>Or maybe he was just being selfish. Who knew.</p><p>But this time the loneliness didn’t just burn, it stung as well. He wasn’t even alone this time, either, Sam was right behind him, refusing to leave him alone in this cold, empty cell surrounded by fire. </p><p>It was probably a good call.</p><p>The obsidian walls seemed to scream at him. Laugh at him. He wasn’t the only person Dream had hurt. Tommy knew that. But sometimes it felt like he was the only one who felt it like this. Who felt Dreams smile on him every second of every day, who felt the puppet strings pulling at him in ways that left his head reeling and his chest hurting.</p><p>He could hear explosions in his ears, and he wasn’t sure if it made it better or worse that he didn’t even know which explosions he was having flashbacks of.</p><p>The room was completely empty, save for the chest and the water and the screaming obsidian walls. They were so loud, those walls, and so empty. Obsidian walls had always been loud, Tommy thought. They were always a sign of a greater game being played, a secret move on a chessboard that Tommy didn’t even know existed until his kind was already in check. </p><p>Maybe it was because if Dream was anything other than Dream, then he was those obsidian walls. And if Dream was those walls then Tommy was the lava that fell down around them, and there was nothing he could do about it but burn a whole lot of nothing.</p><p>Dear god, he hoped nobody would try to drown him. Would that turn him into Dream? Was that who he would be, once the sun set and the world moved on? If he didn’t want to burn, he would have to turn into Dream, so heaven knows he’ll light the matches himself if that’s what it takes.</p><p>Then Tommy looks back at the walls, and there’s no clock, there’s just an empty picture frame, and he doesn’t know why but it makes him want to cry. It makes him want to fucking cry because damn it, of course he took the fucking clock and left nothing else behind.</p><p>Of course he didn’t leave anything else behind.</p><p> Other than – </p><p>‘Tommy,’ He heard Sam say from behind him, the worry evident in his voice. Tommy couldn’t even care though, couldn’t even feel angry about being pitied. ‘We should go now.’</p><p>Tommy nodded slightly, but moved towards the chest anyway. ‘I just wanna see if he left anything.’ His voice sounded coarse and empty, even to him. Sam could hear it as plain as day, Tommy knew that. Maybe that was why he just nodded and let Tommy open the chest. Or maybe there was some other reason, something else that Tommy couldn’t understand or control.</p><p>The chest creaked slightly as he opened it, his hands shaking and his heart trying to tear its way out of his ribcage. He didn’t know why he was so scared – it was just a chest, it was just a chest, it was just –</p><p>It was almost completely empty. Where there had previously been stacks of books, there was just a single bruised and torn and burned leather book. The edges of the dark leather cover were singed, small flowers of scars left by fire and destruction. Presumably the result of lava. How the entire book hadn’t been consumed, Tommy had no idea – maybe the lava had been too afraid to completely destroy what it couldn’t control or understand. Maybe it just couldn’t.</p><p>Ink leaked out of the book, too – the same dark blood that surrounded Tommy, the same emptiness the walls were made of. It was so Dream, in such an unexplainable and inexplicable way, and Tommy was scared.</p><p>He was scared, but he took it anyway.</p><p>The chest slammed shut as he let go of it, a loud crash that would have made him jump if he wasn’t so lost in his own mind. He vaguely registered Sam’s hand on his shoulder as he read the title, scratched into the leather with dark, bleeding words that seemed to scratch themselves into Tommy’s soul, and oh god this was Dream, Dream had written this and Tommy was going to read it because what the fuck else was he supposed to do.</p><p>
  <em>In which I was never the Story<br/>
-	Dream :)</em>
</p><p>Tommy almost dropped the book, his hands trembling almost in time with his beating heart. Sams hand tightened slightly on his shoulder, but he didn’t say anything – he probably knew that nothing he said would help. He couldn’t undo what Dream had done, he couldn’t put a reverse on this. He couldn’t protect Tommy from Dream, but he was here, and he understood, and nobody else seemed to be capable of doing that. </p><p>That in itself helped Tommy to remember how to breathe.</p><p>If the clock was still there, Tommy was sure the hands would have stopped ticking as he flipped open the page.</p><p>
  <em>I am the writer, not the story.</em>
</p><p>Tommy stopped on that line, re-reading it what felt like a hundred times. It felt like – well, it felt both unexplainably and irrevocably like Dream, but at the same time it was just so not. Dream had always been the story, he had always controlled the entire world. Of course he was the writer, but since when had he not been the story?</p><p>He had always been the story, everything that happened had always revolved around him. But maybe – well, maybe he had changed. Sam said his name, quietly, gently, and Tommy wondered for a minute if he had spoken out loud. Or maybe Sam had just sensed that Tommy was questioning Dreams moral compass, questioning if Dream was maybe, just maybe, not as bad a guy as he seemed.</p><p>He really needed to stop doing that.</p><p>He breathed deeply, and started again.</p><p>
  <em>I am the writer, not the story.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I am a world in which certain things are left out<br/>
And certain things are left behind<br/>
But I have not yet learned to care what is forgotten or remembered.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I move my pen across the page<br/>
And hope my words ring true.<br/>
A completely human effort to be heard without being understood,<br/>
To be listened to without being questioned.<br/>
And sure, sometimes the words get a little muddled along the way<br/>
But that's fine, because at least I'm moving the pen.<br/>
It's moving. The pen's still moving.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And maybe I'm not the story<br/>
But that doesn't mean I don't understand it.<br/>
All I want is for you to hear it.<br/>
I have the understanding part covered, thanks.<br/>
The only thing I hear is the thump<br/>
Thump<br/>
Thump<br/>
Spoiler - it's my heartbeat leaving scars<br/>
That you don't yet have the tools to remove<br/>
So don't. Just hear the words my pen leaves in your veins.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And maybe the words aren't always easy<br/>
And maybe sometimes they don't want to let the pen move<br/>
And maybe sometimes they get trapped in the little coffin of my heart.<br/>
But that's fine.<br/>
As long as I keep the pen moving<br/>
The words will start to scream loud enough that they'll shatter<br/>
My little fragile coffin heart of ink and glass<br/>
And then the story can dance again</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Can you dance?<br/>
I don't know you.<br/>
Maybe you're good at dancing, I wouldn't know.<br/>
Maybe you're one of those people that moves freely across the floor<br/>
Like there's no chains to hold you down<br/>
But it's ok.<br/>
I know better.<br/>
Still.<br/>
Couldn't be me.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And perhaps I'm not the story,<br/>
But that's ok.<br/>
I never needed to be the story<br/>
Or to have one of my own.<br/>
It's enough for me to tell you all the other stories my little coffin heart<br/>
And watch as you slowly forget your chains are letting you dance.<br/>
Or maybe it's the opposite<br/>
And you learn to dance to the music of my words.<br/>
That would be enough,<br/>
I think.<br/>
To learn to move would be enough.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And I don't need you to tell me you're in love<br/>
Because I already know.<br/>
Your chains are big enough for me to figure it out myself,<br/>
I think.<br/>
Nobody who cannot love is chained like you and I.<br/>
The only difference is that I know where my shackles trap me,<br/>
And I do not know yours at all.<br/>
I do not know you,<br/>
I say,<br/>
As I move my pen.<br/>
I do not.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Are your chains pretty, little bird?<br/>
Do they sparkle in the sunlight?<br/>
Do you remember sunlight?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I do not know your shackles, but I would like to,<br/>
I think.<br/>
Did you make the mistake in loving a person?<br/>
Here's a tip -<br/>
I'm too fragile for you,<br/>
And I have built too many walls for you to see it.<br/>
I do not know you, but I know that.<br/>
I know that because I tell stories and I love words and I am a little glass coffin<br/>
Of glass<br/>
and fire<br/>
and wishes on stars.<br/>
Those are facts.<br/>
Maybe try loving something else.<br/>
Shackle yourself to something that won't scream back at you.<br/>
Or scream louder, I guess.<br/>
Your call.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Or maybe you fell in love with the thrill<br/>
That comes with keeping one step ahead of the truth of what chains us all.<br/>
Well.<br/>
Jokes on you.<br/>
You've been chained longer than the rest of us combined.<br/>
Moron.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But it's not my place to judge you.<br/>
I don't even know you.<br/>
You don't even understand me.<br/>
I can lay my little coffin heart of words down here<br/>
And you will still not understand me.<br/>
That is us, in our simple, awful, honest humanity<br/>
Unknowable,<br/>
The lot of us,<br/>
No matter how loud we scream.<br/>
But that's fine.<br/>
I was never one for screaming anyway.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>No,<br/>
I don't scream<br/>
I leave scars.<br/>
I will leave tapestries of scars on you<br/>
In the shapes of stories and tears.<br/>
But I am not the story,<br/>
And I will never be the story,<br/>
And maybe that’s not as alright as I like to pretend,<br/>
But that's fine.<br/>
My pen's still moving, see?<br/>
My pen's still moving,<br/>
And I am leaving scars<br/>
In your little golden veins<br/>
And one day you'll figure out how to erase them.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But that's fine.<br/>
I'll just leave you with more.<br/>
And when your chains break, little bird,<br/>
Oh,<br/>
Then you can come to me with your pitchfork<br/>
And crack open my little coffin<br/>
Of fire<br/>
and blood<br/>
and flesh<br/>
and glass.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Until then?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Maybe try learning to dance.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I've heard it's fun.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Tommy dropped the book on the floor. It burned him, it was – well. It was certainly something.</p><p>He couldn’t tell what it meant. He could tell – well, he could tell certain parts of it were meant for him, and certain parts of it weren’t. He was completely certain which bits were which, but some was obvious. </p><p>Enough was obvious.</p><p>He breathed slowly and deeply, leaning down to pick up the book before turning to Sam.</p><p>‘I think –’ He stopped, looking at Sams eyes. They seemed sad, in the strange kind of way where you already knew what would happen next and couldn’t do anything about it.</p><p>Well, Sam probably knew more than he did anyway.</p><p>‘I think some of this was meant for someone else.’ He whispered, as if saying it any louder would summon Dream himself. Sam just smiled sadly, nodding.</p><p>‘I was going to tell George and Sapnap after. I can give it to them, if you like?’</p><p>Tommy just nodded, handing it over as fast as possible. Then he turned and walked out of the prison with Sam by his side because – well.</p><p>He supposed he had a pitchfork to find.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>parts of the poem were kinda inspired by litany in which certain things are crossed out by Richard Siken, please go read it it's a beautiful poem.<br/>Sorry about my shitty poetry I hate editing and revising poetry so this is literally the second draft of the poem, please don't shoot me.</p><p>This made more sense in my head.</p><p>Thanks if you read all the way through though, have a good day :)</p><p>Hope you liked it, sorry it was more of a drabble than an actual fic.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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